Coffins containing some of the bodies of 40 victims of an alleged massacre in Kosovo were loaded on to trucks yesterday to be taken to their home village after a three-week dispute with Serbian authorities.
A few relatives collected bodies by car after extensive autopsies following allegations by international monitors that the ethnic Albanian victims were massacred by Serbian police. Others waited 30 km south of Pristina, in the town of Stimlje, near the village of Racak, where the victims died.
The return of the bodies to Racak was delayed first by a lengthy examination of the bodies by Serbian and Finnish experts, and by an argument between relatives who wanted them brought back and buried together and Serb officials who insisted they be put in separate graveyards.